Methods and systems for node and link identification

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems for node and link detection in social network analysis. Interactive noise reduction allows reduction of the data set under analysis to enable substantially real time detection of links and nodes.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims the benefit of U.S. provisionalapplication No. 61/803,547, filed on Mar. 20, 2013, the entiredisclosure of which is incorporated by reference as if set forth in itsentirety herein.

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT

This invention was made with government support under Air Force ResearchLaboratory Contract No. FA8750-12-C-0210. The government may havecertain rights in the invention.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed toward the field of social networkanalysis (SNA) and, in particular, to noise reduction and detectingrelationships between users within social media data streams.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Social network analysis focuses on the application of network theory tosocial relationships. Individuals in the network can be thought of asnodes and relationships between those individuals can be thought of aslinks.

Many popular uses of the Internet result in the generation of massiveamounts of data that effectively document, explicitly or implicitly,individuals and their relationships to each other. Due to the size ofthis data set and its constantly-changing nature, it is difficult tomanually analyze this data. It would be desirable to have automatedmethods and systems that can process this data into a social networkwith little manual intervention and guidance.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription section. This summary is not intended to identify keyfeatures or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is itintended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimedsubject matter.

The present invention represents a practical solution to SNA linkdetection. One object of the present invention is to discover implicitand explicit networks in social media and discern meaning. In oneembodiment, the present invention is a combination of semanticprocessing, term recommendation, data acquisition, noise reduction, andlink detection algorithms employed within a computing framework. Oneembodiment of the present invention uses the Linear Sub-Modular BanditsGreedy algorithm (LSB) combined with multi-dimensional feature analysis.That feature analysis may consider values for singular valuedecomposition, modified Katz index, and side information such as usermetadata associated with each person or network node.

In one aspect, the present invention concerns a method for networkanalysis. At least one search term is received through an interface in,e.g., a query or document. A recommendation engine is queried toretrieve at least one additional term related to the at least one searchterm. The at least one additional term is provided through the networkinterface. A data store is queried to retrieve information relating tothe at least one search term and the at least one additional term. Theretrieved information is provided through the network interface.Feedback on the relevance of the retrieved information is receivedthrough the network interface. The processor identifies influentialnodes and links therebetween in the retrieved information using thereceived feedback.

In one embodiment, the recommendation engine comprises informationconcerning third party usage of the at least one search term provided bythe user or extracted from a user provided document and the at least oneadditional term. In another embodiment, the data store comprisesinformation from social media and other data sources includinginformation relating to the at least one search term and the at leastone additional term. In still another embodiment, the feedback includeshuman review of the relevance of the retrieved information. In yetanother embodiment, identifying influential nodes and links therebetweenincludes ranking the nodes and links based on the received feedback. Inanother embodiment, identifying influential nodes and links includesidentifying influential nodes and links using at least one of the LinearSubmodular Bandits algorithm and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation. In oneembodiment, identifying at least one additional term includesidentifying at least one additional term utilizing at least one ofcollaborative filtering, cosine similarity, and a user model.

In one embodiment, the method includes iterating substantially in realtime the steps of receiving feedback on the relevance of the retrievedinformation and identifying influential nodes and links therebetween inthe retrieved information using the received feedback. In anotherembodiment, the method includes ranking the identified nodes in terms ofinfluence. In still another embodiment, the method includes presenting areal time user updateable graphical depiction of the influential nodesand the links therebetween using a display.

In another aspect, the present invention concerns a system for networkanalysis. The system includes an interface, a processor in communicationwith the interface, a recommendation engine in communication with theprocessor, and a data store in communication with the processor. Theinterface is configured to receive at least one search term. Theprocessor is configured to retrieve from the recommendation engine atleast one additional term related to the at least one search term, andto retrieve from the data store information relating to the at least onesearch term and the at least one additional term. The interface isfurther configured to provide the at least one additional term and theretrieved information, and to receive feedback on the relevance of theretrieved information. The processor is further configured to identifyinfluential nodes and links therebetween in the retrieved informationusing the received feedback.

In one embodiment, the recommendation engine includes informationconcerning third party usage of the at least one search term and the atleast one additional term. In another embodiment, the data storeincludes information from social media sources including informationrelating to the at least one search term and the at least one additionalterm. In still another embodiment, the processor identifies influentialnodes and links therebetween by ranking the nodes and links based on thereceived feedback. In yet another embodiment, the recommendation engineidentifies at least one additional term utilizing at least one ofcollaborative filtering, cosine similarity, and a user model. In oneembodiment, the processor identifies influential nodes and links usingat least one of the Linear Submodular Bandits algorithm, and the LatentDirichlet Allocation.

In one embodiment, the system includes a display in communication withthe processor and configured to present a graphical depiction of theinfluential nodes and the links therebetween. In another embodiment, theprocessor is configured to identify influential nodes and linkstherebetween in the retrieved information using the received feedbacksubstantially in real time.

In yet another aspect, the present invention concerns a method for motifrecognition in a set of graphs derived from a collection of noisereduced data. An uncompressed graph from the set of graphs iscompressed, and the compressed graph is appended to a similar graph fromthe set of graphs. The number of canonical representations of thecompressed graph in the set of graphs is counted to yield a first count.A random graph equal in size to the uncompressed graph is generated fromthe noise reduced data, and the number of canonical representations ofthe compressed graph in the random graph is counted to yield a secondcount. A distribution score is computed utilizing at least the firstcount and the second count to determine the significance of thecompressed graph.

These and other features and advantages, which characterize the presentnon-limiting embodiments, will be apparent from a reading of thefollowing detailed description and a review of the associated drawings.It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description andthe following detailed description are explanatory only and are notrestrictive of the non-limiting embodiments as claimed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

Non-limiting and non-exhaustive embodiments are described with referenceto the following Figures in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an overview of the concept ofoperations for an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a system in accord withthe present invention;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating the architecture and data flowthrough an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a pseudo code implementation of the LSB Greedy Algorithm;

FIG. 5 is a multi-dimensional graph representing a decision space for anindividual user, i.e., a node in a social media network;

FIG. 6 is a hyperplane fitting of users, i.e., a plurality of nodes in asocial network, in accord with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a multi-dimensional graph representing the classification ofnode/user relationships;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of the GraphLab architecture;

FIG. 9 depicts the GraphLab processing flow based on graph vertexes;

FIG. 10 is a graph showing related nodes and users grouped together bytopic;

FIG. 11 is a graph showing the relative influence of individual users,i.e., nodes in a social network;

FIG. 12 depicts an example of motif recognition; and

FIG. 13 is a depiction of an exemplary user interface for the noisereduction process.

In the drawings, like reference characters generally refer tocorresponding parts throughout the different views. The drawings are notnecessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed on the principlesand concepts of operation.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Various embodiments are described more fully below with reference to theaccompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and which show specificexemplary embodiments. However, embodiments may be implemented in manydifferent forms and should not be construed as limited to theembodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided sothat this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fullyconvey the scope of the embodiments to those skilled in the art.Embodiments may be practiced as methods, systems or devices.Accordingly, embodiments may take the form of a hardware implementation,an entirely software implementation or an implementation combiningsoftware and hardware aspects. The following detailed description is,therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense.

One object of the present invention is to accelerate the processing oflarge social media streams in response to time-critical IntelligentProblems (IPs) or Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs). Embodimentsof the present invention are designed to provide link and networkidentification within overwhelming and noisy social media data streams(e.g., Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.).

Manually extracting links and identifying networks is often impracticalin big data environments. Embodiments of the present invention do thisautomatically for both implicit and explicit network relations on behalfof the user. With reference to FIG. 1, the overall inventivearchitecture employs a pipeline of algorithms for data acquisition 100,noise reduction 104, link detection 108, node influence 112, and linkprediction (not shown). One embodiment of the present invention utilizesa framework to perform calculations on the graph generated from thesocial media data in a parallel computing environment.

With reference to FIGS. 1-3, the first step in the inventive process isthe data acquisition stage 100 in which the user submits a question or adocument to the system via an interface 204. This submission is parsedfor essential information 300, such as the terms used in the submission,using a processor that is configured to operate as a parser 208 and theessential information is then sent to a search term recommendationengine 212.

The search term recommendation engine 212 uses recommendation algorithmsto provide the analyst with additional search terms 304 relevant totheir initial query based on the use of the search terms and otheressential information by users of social media. In one embodiment, therecommendation algorithms may classify the essential information into ataxonomy and use the classification to find other terms relevant to theclassified information. In other embodiments, the algorithms are knownrecommendation algorithms such as collaborative filtering and cosinesimilarity. In yet another embodiment, the algorithms generate a modelof a social media user who uses specific keywords, and using that modeldetermines other keywords that such a user would be likely to use. Forexample, a query for “marijuana” may result in recommended terms such as“weed,” “mary jane,” etc. The data acquisition algorithm 216 gathersinformation related to the IP 308 from social media and other datasources.

The noise reduction step 104 distills the torrent of data available fromsocial media data store 224 down to the results that are going to berelevant to the IP. The noise reduction stage 104 begins by presentingexamples of the data retrieved from the store 224 to the user 312 whothen decides which data examples are relevant to the IP. The results ofthis initial evaluation step are provided to noise reduction algorithms220 to further refine the results 316.

Noise reduction 104 can be accomplished by clustering all of theinformation into major topic areas using a variation of the LatentDirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm. However, this process iscomputationally expensive when used to identify all the subsequenttopics that can be found in a natural language text fields. To getaround the computational cost of using LDA, certain embodiments of thepresent invention employ the linear submodular bandits (LSB) algorithmdepicted in pseudocode in FIG. 4. Use of LSB instead of LDA allows for aPareto optimal solution while having the ability to run in a nearreal-time or online fashion. LSB combines the upper confidence boundedtree algorithm with the concept of sub-modularity. This provides acomputationally simple process that is substantially accurate in noisereducing ability.

The high performance provided by the use of LSB allows the noisereduction step 104 to be interactive with the user. The LSB algorithmtakes the initial feedback from the user 316 and creates a linearregression from that feedback to create a weighted matrix for allarticles, both seen and unseen. This matrix is then calculated using thegame theory concept of utility in order to decide which linearregression is most likely to be correct. These results are presented tothe user 312′ who makes a decision as to what articles are relevant tothe IP and the process repeats itself; this allows a variation of theLSB greedy algorithm to display efficiencies not possible with a fullycomputational process. The ability of the system to provide interactivenetwork analysis, receiving feedback from users on the output of thesystem and then revising those results in substantially real-time, isbelieved to be unique and is provided by the use of the noise reductionprocess to cull the initial data set into something that is tractablewithout a significant reduction in relevant results.

Once noise reduction 104 is complete 320 the data is subjected to thelink analysis stage 112. Embodiments of the present invention findrelationships that a user may not identify unaided due to the sheervolume of data at issue.

Certain embodiments of the invention utilize online learning algorithmsthat can significantly improve performance over traditional offlinemethods without any significant loss of precision or recall. Onlinelearning algorithms assume that all data is not available at processingtime and allow for incremental updates of relationships and links as newdata comes into the system. In contrast, offline learning processesassume that all data is present at the initial run and no subsequentprocessing is required. Online processing allows the handling of largerdatasets than the offline learning method and introduces the ability toprocess streaming live data directly from large, dynamic data sourcessuch as Twitter or Facebook. This increase in the amount of dataaccessible to the online learning methods allows a larger increase inprecision and recall. Examples of online machine learning platformssuited for use in various embodiments of the present invention includeVowpal Wabbit, Apache Mahout, and Jubatus.

As depicted in FIG. 5, online link detection 108 uses multi-dimensionalfeature analysis with each node plotted along three axes, one axis foreach of Singular Value Decomposition, Modified Katz Index, and SideInfo. The red circles represent nodes within the social network whichare not connected. Blue circles represent nodes which are related to oneanother. The goal of the automated SNA process is to cluster nodes whichare related to one another while excluded nodes which are unconnected.

With reference to FIG. 6, in one embodiment the multi-dimensional planeis processed using the Vowpal Wabbit algorithm, developed by Yahoo andMicrosoft Research, to determine the best fit of each node within agiven hyperplane. After processing 108, nodes on the same hyperplaneshare a relationship with each other.

As discussed above, embodiments of the present invention permitsubstantially real time processing of these large, rapidly changing datasets. With reference to FIG. 7, as nodes change (e.g., anytime a userposts to a social media site or new social media users are added) thegraph is quickly updated by denoisifying the data set and regrouping thenodes into hyperplanes. Implementation of the SNA solver as a graphcalculation problem makes it easy to add new nodes and allowsscalability of the solution from a single processor core up to, e.g., acloud based solution containing hundreds of real or virtual processors.

For example, one embodiment of the present invention uses GraphLab, aparallel processing machine learning architecture designed to bedeployed on cloud computing services. Another embodiment of the presentinvention uses GraphChi on single computers with access to a solid statedrive. GraphLab provides speed ups such as asynchronous data messagingand vertex centric modeling not seen in similar parallel distributionarchitectures such as Hadoop. These speedups are significant and onequivalent machines outperform Hadoop by several orders of magnitude.GraphLab provides this improved performance by assuming that a computingnode coincides with a node in the link network instead of, e.g.,splitting nodes among processing cores as would occur in some Hadoopimplementations.

In FIG. 8 the GraphLab API stack is shown, indicating which librariesand what operating systems hooks are available. FIG. 9 presents anexample of how a vertex is updated in GraphLab. By taking thisvertex-first approach, a reconciliation process in which the calculatededges must be reconnected is not needed. This produces significantperformance improvement over baseline parallel frameworks such as ApacheHadoop.

One output of embodiments of the present invention is a display 324 ofgroups of related nodes as well as relations between networks of nodesas shown in FIG. 10. The network neighborhood display allows a user toidentify which nodes, and therefore users, are more likely to discusscertain topics and allows the user to quickly discover new andinteresting connections present in the data.

Embodiments of the present invention also analyze individual nodes in anetwork to identify their level of influence 112 in the network. In oneembodiment, the present invention uses a Modified Decreasing CascadeModel to determine which node has the most influence within a givennetwork. In another embodiment, the present invention uses the PageRankalgorithm on various user metrics and statistics (e.g., the length oftime it takes for one user to repeat the post of another, the number ofusers connected to a given user, etc.) to identify the influence of anyindividual node.

These influence scores allow the user to decide which nodes, andtherefore users, should be followed more closely. Influence scores areupdateable and amendable by the user; for example, the user can changethe weights used to calculate the nodes' influence score and recalculatethe influence scores based on this new information. As shown in FIG. 11,color intensity could indicate the relative influence of individualscompared to other members of the same neighborhood.

FIG. 12 depicts an example of motif recognition. In social networkanalysis, information is generally collected and processed based onspecific information requirements of the user. These requirements serveas a contextual starting point from which network motifs are discovered.Motifs are unique subgraphs or patterns of interconnections occurring incomplex networks at significantly higher numbers as compared to randomnetworks. Motif detection in noise reduced data sets is split up intothree major elements.

The first element focuses on graph compression using a g-trie datastructure. This structure provides maximum data compression and iscomputationally inexpensive because the algorithm recursively goesthrough the previously stored graphs and appends the new graph to theend of a similar graph. In this way, a canonical form is calculated suchthat all graphs have the same format and cannot be counted twice. Thiscanonical search is done by a greedy search and only finds the mostoptimal branching index such that the data structure is as compressed asmuch as theoretically possible.

The second element of motif detection determines if the inserted graphis anomalous as compared to all possible graphs. To determine this, acount of all possible canonical representations of the motif must becounted in the original graph. The original counts are then comparedagainst counts in two random network generators. One of them is theErdos-Renyi Random Graph model and the other is the Watts-Strogatz SmallWorld Model. The resulting random networks are equal in size to theoriginal graph and then motif instances are counted in each of theserandom networks. These count comparisons directly influence thepotential Fisher distribution score calculated for significance of thegraphs. The further the Fisher score is away from zero, the higher thelikelihood that the motif is significant. The Fisher score allows usersto adjust result size based on motif significance. This parameterprovides the ability to include some domain or side information into thecalculation to further narrow final motif result set.

The final element of motif recognition improves overall calculationspeeds. The performance gain is through the use of symmetry breakingconditions introduced to avoid redundant calculations of significance.This addition determines if the motif has been seen before in the graphby examining both graphs from their respective canonicalrepresentations. This prevents the doubling seen in the mFinder andFanMod algorithms.

There is a significant capability advantage to this approach because itallows for discovery of much larger motifs which is a limitation ofother motif finding approaches. The motifs found by the g-trie algorithmrepresent the building blocks of our solution. This solution can beapplied to Twitter data feeds and various challenge problems. Oneexemplary application is to predict box office rankings for a given setof movies and over specified time period. A second application is topredict the end of month change for select common stocks. Bothapplications proved successful with predictions matching real worldoutcomes.

FIG. 13 depicts how a user interacts with an embodiment of the presentinvention. The user interface shown guides the user through noisereduction process starting from the left and moving right with everincreasing relevancy. The left side of the user interface shows concepts(ontology) used to filter and guide the noise reduction. Moving right inthe user interface, sliders allow the user to specify the relativeimportance of concepts. The center graph is the result of the noisereduction process and criteria specified by the user. The right mostarea in the user interface is displayed when the user selects a node inthe graph. This area displays detailed information about the node suchas user name, recent tweets and topics, etc. Users can create andinteract with multiple graphs concurrently as indicated by the tabbedpanes within the user interface. Each graph can be interrelated by nodeswhich appear in multiple graphs.

Embodiments of the present disclosure, for example, are described abovewith reference to block diagrams and/or operational illustrations ofmethods, systems, and computer program products according to embodimentsof the present disclosure. The functions/acts noted in the blocks mayoccur out of the order as shown in any flowchart. For example, twoblocks shown in succession may in fact be executed substantiallyconcurrent or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order,depending upon the functionality/acts involved. Additionally, not all ofthe blocks shown in any flowchart need to be performed and/or executed.For example, if a given flowchart has five blocks containingfunctions/acts, it may be the case that only three of the five blocksare performed and/or executed. In this example, any of the three of thefive blocks may be performed and/or executed.

The description and illustration of one or more embodiments provided inthis application are not intended to limit or restrict the scope of thepresent disclosure as claimed in any way. The embodiments, examples, anddetails provided in this application are considered sufficient to conveypossession and enable others to make and use the best mode of theclaimed embodiments. The claimed embodiments should not be construed asbeing limited to any embodiment, example, or detail provided in thisapplication. Regardless of whether shown and described in combination orseparately, the various features (both structural and methodological)are intended to be selectively included or omitted to produce anembodiment with a particular set of features. Having been provided withthe description and illustration of the present application, one skilledin the art may envision variations, modifications, and alternateembodiments falling within the spirit of the broader aspects of thegeneral inventive concept embodied in this application that do notdepart from the broader scope of the claimed embodiments.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for network analysis, the methodcomprising: receiving, through an interface, at least one search term;querying a recommendation engine to retrieve at least one additionalterm related to the at least one search term; providing, through theinterface, the at least one additional term; querying a data store toretrieve information relating to the at least one search term and the atleast one additional term; providing, through the interface, theretrieved information; receiving, through the interface, feedback on therelevance of the retrieved information; and identifying, using aprocessor, influential nodes and links therebetween in the retrievedinformation using the received feedback.
 2. The method of claim 1wherein the recommendation engine comprises information concerning thirdparty usage of the at least one search term and the at least oneadditional term.
 3. The method of claim 1 wherein the data storecomprises information from social media sources including informationrelating to the at least one search term and the at least one additionalterm.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein the feedback comprises humanreview of the relevance of the retrieved information.
 5. The method ofclaim 1 wherein identifying influential nodes and links therebetweencomprises ranking the nodes and links based on the received feedback. 6.The method of claim 1 wherein identifying at least one additional termcomprises identifying at least one additional term utilizing at leastone of collaborative filtering, cosine similarity, and a user model. 7.The method of claim 1 wherein identifying influential nodes and linkscomprises identifying influential nodes and links using at least one ofthe Linear Submodular Bandits algorithm and the Latent DirichletAllocation.
 8. The method of claim 1 further comprising iteratingsubstantially in real time the steps of receiving feedback on therelevance of the retrieved information and identifying influential nodesand links therebetween in the retrieved information using the receivedfeedback.
 9. The method of claim 1 further comprising ranking theidentified nodes in terms of influence.
 10. The method of claim 1further comprising presenting, using a display, a graphical depiction ofthe influential nodes and the links therebetween.
 11. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the at least one search term is provided in a query ordocument.
 12. A system for network analysis, the system comprising: aninterface configured to receive at least one search term; arecommendation engine in communication with a processor, the processorconfigured to retrieve at least one additional term related to the atleast one search term from the recommendation engine, the interfacefurther configured to provide the at least one additional term; and adata store comprising information relating to the at least one searchterm and the at least one additional term, the processor incommunication with the data store, the processor further configured toretrieve information relating to the at least one search term and the atleast one additional term from the data store, the interface furtherconfigured to provide the retrieved information, the interface furtherconfigured to receive feedback on the relevance of the retrievedinformation, the processor further configured to identify influentialnodes and links therebetween in the retrieved information using thereceived feedback.
 13. The system of claim 12 wherein the recommendationengine comprises information concerning third party usage of the atleast one search term and the at least one additional term.
 14. Thesystem of claim 12 wherein the data store comprises information fromsocial media sources including information relating to the at least onesearch term and the at least one additional term.
 15. The system ofclaim 12 wherein the processor identifies influential nodes and linkstherebetween by ranking the nodes and links based on the receivedfeedback.
 16. The system of claim 12 wherein the recommendation engineidentifies at least one additional term utilizing at least one ofcollaborative filtering, cosine similarity, and a user model.
 17. Thesystem of claim 12 wherein the processor identifies influential nodesand links using at least one of the Linear Submodular Bandits algorithmand the Latent Dirichlet Allocation.
 18. The system of claim 12 furthercomprising a display in communication with the processor and configuredto present a graphical depiction of the influential nodes and the linkstherebetween.
 19. The system of claim 12 wherein the processor isconfigured to identify influential nodes and links therebetween in theretrieved information using the received feedback substantially in realtime.